Dateline 1994. The crude pile of pixels above from AT&T appeared on a website called HotWired. About 44 percent of the people that saw it clicked.

The event is worth noting in the annals of advertising. The banner ad had arrived and a new era of digital marketing was born. 24 years and billions of dollars later, the industry continues to evolve daily.

Today, it’s been said (far too often) you have a higher probability of surviving a plane crash or winning the lottery than clicking a banner ad.

Yes, this is a big slice of hyperbole, but it does open the gate to examining a very real problem in online marketing…

Banner ads are a bust.

You see, they’re subconsciously filtered out by almost everyone, a phenomenon that has come to be known as banner blindness.

Clickthrough rates are abysmal.

The research looked at various placements and sizes for display ads and reported clickthrough rate (CTR) across all ad formats is 0.05%.

Ad clickthrough rate varies according to placement and format. The traditional “leaderboard” banner performs poorly compared to skyscrapers, the medium rectangle and the newer large rectangle format.

The study also claims rich media ads realize a slightly better CTR of 0.1%. According to this research, CTR for video ads earn a slight advantage for some, but not all, formats.

The study claims CTR for other online ad formats—like Google AdWords and Facebook—can exceed 1% and are more effective in that they typically have higher intent, and therefore, superior conversion rates.

Ad blocking is an issue

The growing popularity of ad blocking certainly adds to the woes of those who buy or sell displays ads.

Above is data on ad blocking user penetration rate in the United States. In 2016, 24.4 percent of U.S. Internet users blocked ads on their connected devices. The 2017 and 2018 percentages were projected.

Another sore spot related to ad blocking: the highest earners tend to be the most likely to install ad blocking software.

Advertisers, where are we now?

It seems clear banner ads don’t perform well. Should you be satisfied with .1% click-through rates and burning budget on impressions no one notices?

“Growth of native digital display is being driven by publishers’ pursuit of higher-value and more mobile-friendly inventory, as well as by advertisers’ demands for more engaging, less intrusive ads.”

“We’re seeing a huge ramp up in non-social publishers adopting in-feed ads and video. Coupled with continued advances on the programmatic native front, this will accelerate non-social native display spending.”

—Lauren Fisher, eMarketing analyst

“Globally the predictions are that advertisers over the next four years will be moving 25% of their marketing budgets from traditional advertising to native advertising and content marketing.

This will represent the biggest structural shift since the emergence of TV-advertising.”